In the area of database and memory management, it may be desirable to reduce the number of duplicate files (called “blobs”)—within a given computer, within a number of computers, or across a computing and networked environment. To automate such a process, the computer or environment needs to identify these blobs and take appropriate action thereafter.
The effort to avoid duplicate files is rewarded with a concomitant savings in disk space, I/O and network bandwidth savings. Thus, it may be desirable to accurately and efficiently handle and manage duplicate files.